


Light of Dawn

by Pilarcraft



Series: A Smarter Man (The Dragon Prince) [5]
Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Basically what I wanted Callum to ask when Rayla said that in S03E01, Elarion - Freeform, Gen, ooc in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27952574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pilarcraft/pseuds/Pilarcraft
Summary: “Are we…” he asked sometime later when they had finally made their hapless escape, taking shelter for a few minutes to catch their breath. His tone was only slightly less insecure than right after he had tainted himself for the first -she hoped only- time. “Are we friends?”
Relationships: Callum & Rayla (The Dragon Prince)
Series: A Smarter Man (The Dragon Prince) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1282421
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	Light of Dawn

“Are we…” he asked sometime later when they had finally made their hapless escape, taking shelter for a few minutes to catch their breath. His tone was only slightly less insecure than right after he had _tainted_ himself for the first -she hoped only- time. “Are we friends?”

“What?” she asked incredulously. It was a somewhat strange question. She conceded that they had only known each other for a short while, and their acquaintanceship hadn’t started on the best of terms. It would have been a fair question to ask at the Banther Lodge or the Cursed Caldera. It might have been justified when they had found themselves at odds regarding his two friends -nevermind that she had been right all along-, and she might have had _some_ justification asking such a question given he knew _how much_ Dark Magic disgusted her, though she wasn’t about to say it given both the context and the events that directly followed Callum’s little dip into that pool of degeneracy. But, how could _he?_ After all that they had gone through? “Of course we are, Callum,” she asked, “What’s brought this up?”

“Stuff you said. I just-“ he paused, “Is it the image of me you’ve built in your head in this last few weeks that you consider a friend, or is it Callum of Katolis, the human prince?”

“I’ll ask again,” she said, as she knew not what he was talking about, or what had brought this up, “what’s brought this up?”

“Like I said, some stuff you said, to the Sun King I mean.” He explained further, “because I feel like it’s not me that you are friends with, but rather the version of me that you’ve made in your head, and I _really_ need to know how different from me that expectation is. I have said some things I’m not too proud of, before we really became friends. So I need to know-“ here he paused, trying to find better words to express his feelings with, “ _how_ are the things you said about my people any better to what I said about _you_ back in the Banther Lodge?”

 _Oh_. Rayla would have winced, if she knew _what_ part of her heartfelt plea to Sol Regem it was that her companion was referring to. To be fair -now that she could think about it, free of the threat of ‘ _Luna above, he’s gonna eat us both_ ’- it could be any of them.

“Callum,” it was her turn to explain, “I said what I _had_ to, to get us out of the scales of a bitter angry old Dragon that was trying to kill us.”

“That’s fair,” he conceded, “and I understand that, but well, you talked about him and then addressed him as the Sun King. An old King of the Dragons who was ‘blinded’ and is now just a symbol of rage and bitterness. Back then I didn’t recognize him but-“ he paused, “do you know what Sol Regem is to humans?”

Rayla winced again. Things were easier when Callum could play the part of a clueless, spoiled princeling out in the wilderness and it wasn’t about something he had a clue about, and -she suspected- as a human he might have more than a clue about what Sol Regem represented, not all of them good or harmless like ‘symbol of rage and bitterness’.

“You must understand, my step fa- the King was not exactly _diligent_ about our education in history.” here he took a deep breath. The wound was still fresh where king Harrow was concerned, and he wasn’t sure how to explain this in a way that wouldn’t be insulting to his late stepfather’s memory. “Part of his own personal view was that history as taught in Katolis is framed in a narrative of strength, and he hoped to move our people out of that kind of thinking, so there are parts of my education that aren’t exactly the same as what some other princes got, but I’m nearly sixteen, and I’ve had too much free time to go over books no matter how much I’d find them boring. You called him your sun king, a former King of the Dragons to whom you owe loyalty. To humans, Sol Regem is the ultimate evil.”

She could see why humans would think this -unlike Callum, Rayla was not nobility and scholarly study was not exactly prioritized in Runaan’s training; but even she knew the basics of it. Rayla might call the early years of the Reign of Tenebris as ‘the wars’, but she was sure humans would call it something _slightly_ different. Regardless, it was difficult for Rayla to put ‘Archdragon’ and ‘evil’ next to each other in a sentence. Maybe it was her upbringing, maybe it was her parents being Dragonguard, maybe it was the fact she was _technically_ at the service of the Dragon Queen. Maybe it was just the fact she was an Elf born and raised in Xadia.

“I don’t just mean what we write about him in our history. Sol Regem is what mothers scare their children about so they’ll behave, what kids have nightmares of at night. He’s why so many towns don’t light flames at night, why so many human settlements are built next to large sources of water or near places we can hide in, why even _now_ and while we live in cities of stone and mortar, we train how to move an entire settlement to a second location as quickly as it’s humanely possible. It’s been a thousand years since Elarion, but we haven’t _forgotten-_ we can’t forget, really.” He explained, “I thought he was long dead, and honestly there is so little written text about human history before the Dispersion that it might as well all be mythology but-

“You talked to an Archdragon calling for the death of _all_ my kind, arguing why _I_ should be spared.” He chuckled bitterly, “do you know how it feels to hear the dragon who burned down Elarion tell me he smells ‘death on me’? This would have been just as hurtful if I’d been just any human but-“

“Callum,” she interrupted, “I was just telling the scunner what he wanted to hear so he wouldn’t burn us both to cinders”

“Yeah, and that went down _perfectly_ , didn’t it?” he threw back, “From the last headcount of two hundred thousand, only twenty-five thousand survived his _first_ attack. Most humans in Duren and Katolis can trace their lineage back to the five that survived what came next. That’s what the- the books I’ve read say. That’s almost _all_ they say, though I’m no scholar of pre-Dispersion history. Why did you think he’d not-“

“Does it matter?” She sputtered at last, “Would this be over if I said I was sorry?”

“Sorry you said it, or sorry I heard?” Callum said, “Because I think we need to clear the air here. Do _you_ think my kind are lesser beings? Because you didn’t even mention to the dragon right about to eat us that I ‘killed innocent beings and ripped their magic’ to save _one of his kind._ ”

“Of course I don’t think you’re lesser, Callum- wait, you do know that wouldn’t really have helped, right?” She pointed out, “if anything, that would have made it worse. We as a whole don’t really have a high opinion on dark magic but dragons? Dragons take that to the next level.”

“I think I know better than you what level they take it to.” He responded coldly. “Look, I’m a Prince of Katolis. I’m not entirely sure what royalty means in Xadia, but here, it means that I am at least _somewhat_ responsible for the well-being of the people of Katolis. What I did, what Sol Regem wanted us all to die for, was the exact opposite. I helped a Dragon attacking a human village escape the authority of the kingdom’s law, meanwhile driving away my two oldest -and really _only-_ friends. If they take my words for what I meant and tell the court about what I did, I can never look at my people in the eye. I need to know now, should I expect some variation of ‘most humans are Evil, Callum’s great though!’ to be brought up every time we see anyone new? Are we really friends? Elf and Human, two people from two different worlds, are we really friends, or am I just- just an honorary Elf to you or something?”

Rayla knew she couldn’t answer that right away. Honestly, that was alright with them both. Callum didn’t expect an answer right away -he’d know she would be lying if she’d said no too quickly, and she knew she couldn’t answer right away because she -like him- didn’t know the true answer yet.

But she would. Not now, but soon she would, and they’d all be better for it. Right now, they were united by purpose. Whether this companionship could develop without them being made to live next to each other in abnormal conditions, only time could tell, and soon enough it was going to.

* * *

When Callum and Rayla met the Great Sun Dragon, they tried to parley, and once that failed, they tried to escape by the means of their skills and intelligence. When Claudia met the Archdragon stuck in a trap of his own making some hours later, she was in no mood for either, and she had lost any form of interest in hearing the thing’s voice or seeing it breathe when the Butcher of Elarion opened conversation with “I smell death”.

**Author's Note:**

> Right. So I wrote this -in part because of a conversation I'd had in Tumblr- and now I have no idea what to write next. I hope I won't go through a year-long hiatus again, but we'll not know until the next chapter's up.
> 
> Sidenote: I'm about to make this a lot more AU (in worldbuilding, the series is au regardless given It's written with only partial knowledge of an as-of-yet incomplete lore) than where I *think* the show's canon will be going. Get used to "Humans really don't like Elves and Dragons, and this is because the former are victims of generational ethnic cleansing done by the latter after Dragons literally burned down a large human city". Callum helping Pyrrah get away from the humans would be taken a *lot* worse here than it would in canon... as would the "Broken Chains" fiasco.
> 
> Sidenote 2: I feel like I need to express this. I'm not claiming Rayla shares Sol Regem's view that humans are lesser beings. While she has *some* prejudices, at that point she's simply saying whatever Sol Regem wants to hear, because that's a large dragon that wants to kill them both, and she really doesn't want either of them to die.


End file.
